A few weeks ago, Stuart Pigott, the US- and Germany-based Riesling expert, released a list of his 25 Top Dry German Rieslings 2015. All the the wines on the list are bone-dry. Most of the wines are Grosses Gewächs (GG) wines, the ultra-premium dry wines of a VDP producer (the association of about 200 elite winemakers in Germany) from a Grosse Lage. Many wines are from the Mosel, the region in Germany so famous for its fruity-sweet and nobles sweet wines. Notably, Weingut Dr. Loosen from the Mosel, well known for its fruity-sweet Kabinett, Spätlese and Auslese wines, has 3 GG wines on the list.

In what follows, I first adress the issue of dry wines in Germany. I then esplain the concept of Grosses Gewächs wine. This is followed by a reprint of Stuart Pigott‘s introductory text and his list of 25 top dry Rieslings. We have visited most of the winemakers on Stuart Pigott‘s list on a Germany Tour by ombiasy WineTours and I am adding a few pictures from these visits as well as other pictures.

Dry Riesling in Germany

There are approximately 47,000 hectares planted with Riesling worldwide. Germany—with 22,500 hectares—accounts for about half of the total. From a global perspective, Riesling is a niche grape variety, accounting for less than 1% of world wine production. From a global perspective, it is the fruity-sweet style (with the fermentation stopped so that the wine remains sweet and the level of alcohol low) and the rare noble-sweet style (lusciously sweet wines due to noble rot or frost in the vineyard) that are receiving the attention of the connoisseurs of premium wines. Dry Riesling has played a minor role in the world of wine, but this is changing. The Rieslings from Alsace and Austria, both considerably smaller producers of Riesling than Germany (Alsace produces approximately 15% and Austria approximately 7% of what Germany produces), have always been in the dry category (although the Rieslings from Alsace have shown a trend toward an increasing level of remaining sweetness in the wine over the past decades), and, importantly, Germany, the dominating Riesling force in the world, has undergone a major trans- formation in the past 40 years: The fruity-sweet Rieslings have been crowded out from the wine lists in Germany, while the “dry wave”—“Trockenwelle”—has swept the country. When you go to a wine bar, wine store, or restaurant in say Frankfurt, Berlin, or Munich, it is very difficult to find a fruity-sweet Riesling. The wine lists are dominated by dry Riesling.

Grosses Gewächs (GG)

What is a Grosses Gewächs wine? There is currently a bit of confusion (and there will be even more confusion in the years to come) as (1) Grosses Gewächs was a term that was created by the VDP only a few years ago and (2) the VDP has created a new classification for German wines that differs radically from the German standard classification (and is still in the process of refining and implementing it). The latest revisions were those that came into effect with the vintage 2012.

Grosses Gewächs and the new German Wine Classification

Although many people think that there is only one wine classification system in Germany – the classification system of the Law of 1971 – this is not correct. True, the classification system of the Law of 1971 is the standard classification system in Germany and the vast majority of winemakers in Germany use this approach. A large number of winemakers, however, have moved away from the standard, in particular the VDP producers.

In a nutshell, the VDP is moving to a classification system that resembles very much the classification system in the Bourgogne. The classification of the VDP puts the terroir principle at the center of its classification approach.

With the latest modifications, the absolutely finest vineyards are called Grosse Lage and dry wines from these super top vineyards are called Grosses Gewächs. Grosses Gewächs wines are the finest dry wines from Germany’s finest vineyards. For legal reasons, the VDP producers use the terms VDP.Grosses Gewächs and VDP.Grosse Lage, instead of just Grosses Gewächs and Grosse Lage.

To qualify for the Grosses Gewächs label, a number of criteria need to be respected. (i) The fruit has to come from a Grosse Lage vineyard. (ii) At harvest, the grapes need to be at least at Spätlese level in terms of the sugar content. (iii) Only certain – typical - grape varieties are allowed, including Riesling and Spätburgunder. Riesling is the only varietal allowed for Grosse Lage wines in the Mosel, Nahe, and Mittelrhein, but grapes like Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir), Lemberger, Frühburgunder, Weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc), Grauburgunder (Pinot Gris), Gewürztraminer, and Silvaner are included in other regions. (iv) Further restrictions apply: there are yield restrictions; only hand picking of grapes is permitted and harvest must be late in the autumn.

Stuart Pigott

Stuart Pigott , born in the UK, was Berlin-based for the past 20 years or so. During this period, he emerged as the leading German wine writer, mostly writing in German, and focusing on German wine. Notably, he now regularly writes for the specialist magazines Feinschmecker and Weingourmet as well as the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He also produced a TV series on German wine.

Picture: Stuart Pigott and Christian G.E. Schiller in Washington DC

A few years ago, Stuart Pigott started to spend a lot of time in New York City, turning his attention to the global world of Riesling. His first major output of the move to New York City is a major book about Riesling in the world, which was published in June 2014: The Best White Wine on Earth: The Riesling Story. See also: Late Night German Riesling Tasting with Riesling Gurus Paul Grieco and Stuart Pigott in Washington DC on the 2013 Riesling Road Trip, USA

JamesSuckling.com - The Top 25 Dry German Rieslings of 2016

Stuart Pigott: "Any list of the top German Rieslings two decades ago would have been dominated by sweet wines like Auslese, Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese with 10% (100 grams per liter) to 25% (250 grams per liter) residual sweetness. Dry wines with less than 1% (10 grams per liter) unfermented grape sugar would have been shutout all together.

How the times have changed. The sheer number and volume of sweet German wines have decreased significantly since the last turn of the century. Specialists such as Egon Müller and Zilliken on the Saar and Joh. Jos. Prüm on the Mosel continue to produce the full range of these wines every year, but they can now be numbered on a couple of hands. Instead, Germany is cranking out far more high quality dry wines that are 90 points or more.

One of the producers who would have been on that list of great wines a generation ago is on this list today. I rated the 1990 Berg Schlossberg Riesling from the Georg Breuer estate in Rüdesheim/ Rheingau 90-91 points when I first tasted it from cask back in the late spring of 1991. It was made by Bernhard Breuer who died in 2004. The 2015 of the same wine was made by his daughter Theresa and scores a 97 on today’s hit list.

The shift towards dry wines is not only about fashion, as is sometimes suggested by lamenting fans of those sweet wines. It has everything to do with climate change and greatly improved winemaking competence for the dry style. Helmut Dönnhoff of the eponymous estate in Oberhausen/Nahe, the father of Cornelius Dönnhoff and maker of the number wine on the hit list explains. “More than 20 years ago we only got the kind of fully ripe, but beautifully clean grapes for top quality dry wines a couple of times a decade, so those wines were rare. Today we get the right kind of grapes for them every year!” Where else in the world did climate change turn wine styles upside down like that? I can’t easily think of another example.

When it comes to winemaking, the big lessons that were learned were about pre-fermentation skin contact and post-fermentation lees (that’s the dead yeast) contact, and which young wines benefit from this and how long to do it for. Skin-contact extracts the aromas, minerals and phenolics (tannins) that are all located in the skins. This helps integrate the pronounced acidity of the Riesling grape and that’s important, because dry wines can’t rely on unfermented sweetness to balance the acidity. The phenol give the wine a lot more power, but they can also make it too mouth-puckering. This is where the creaminess that young wines gain from long lees contact comes in, harmonizing the tannins extracted during skin-contact along with Riesling’s pronounced acidity.

There’s no single right way of playing this winemaking game, rather a bunch of different stylistic possibilities. The list reflects both this and vineyard location. Some of these top wines are quite big and bold, particularly those from heavier soils like the 2015 Morstein “GG” from Wittmann in Westhofen that rated 97 points. At the other extreme are sleek wines from very stony soils like the 2015 Berg Schlossberg from Georg Breuer that also rated 97.

My Top 25 is all about harmony and individuality. Although one or two of these wines need a bit more time to open up, they all have great balance. None are lacking in ripeness or concentration, but those levels weren’t so difficult to achieve in this rather low yield vintage with a hot and dry growing season. Individuality isn’t a hit or miss matter, rather a task that requires years of systematic work refining a particular style of wine. That makes the achievement of winemakers karsten Peter of Gut Hermannsberg, the erstwhile State Domaine in the Nahe, and Achim von Oetinger of the eponymous estate in the Rheingau all the greater. Both made the Top 25 after only a few years work.

Although the main focus of this list is wines of the 2015 vintage, a couple of late-release wines from earlier vintages also earned a place, most notably the 2012 Erdener Prälat “GG Reserve” from Dr. Loosen. It spent two entire years on the lees in barrel and is only now about to be released. Ernst Loosen is one of a small, but important group of producers experimenting with extended barrel ageing for high-end dry Rieslings. The fact that this wine earned 2nd place on the list suggests we’ll be hearing a lot more about German Rieslings like this during the next few years.

What to drink with these wines? Certainly with any fish dish with which you would order a Chablis Grand Cru or 1er Cru. In that case, the more bottle age the wine has, the better it will fit with the food. However, unlike those wines, everything on this list can also cope with intensely spicy dishes from a wide range of Southern and Eastern Asian cuisines. In this case you need to stick with the last couple of vintages for the pairing to work really well. There are also possibilities like beef tartar, roast chicken, or preserved lemon risotto."

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About Me

I live in the greater Washington DC (US) and Frankfurt am Main (Germany) areas and write about wine. I am a member of the FIJEV (International Federation of Wine and Spirits Journalists and Writers). Before starting to write about wine in 2009, I was for almost 30 years an economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). I am currently in Washington DC.